The publication of the names and home addresses of gun permit holders in two counties in New York by the Lower Hudson Journal News kicked off a firestorm of criticism, and refusal by another county to provide this information to the Journal News as a danger to public safety.

The Journal News pledged to follow up with more disclosures despite claims that police and correctional officers were put in danger by publication of their home addresses..

The publication also resulted in retaliatory exposure of personal information about Journal News staff, as well as staff of parent company Gannett. The Journal News user database was hacked.

When Gawker writer John Cook link-baited by publishing a two-year old list of the names of gun permit holders in New York City, Cook’s personal information was put online in retaliation.

One of the people behind these retaliatory information disclosures, who runs a website with names, addresses, telephone numbers and photos of various journalists homes and family members, now has posted an Anonymous-style video threatening more disclosures:

Sorry, the enemy makes the rules in war and this is war. If they are not interested in seeing their children’s info plastered allover the internet they should have considered this before publishing information that could logically get someone killed. This “we don’t do that” attitude is why the progressives have literally mopped the floor with the Constitution and Deceleration of Independence. They pay no consequences for these actions and never have.

The USSR was already at war with Germany. The Allies were well aware of Stalin’s charms – please read Churchill’s speech on the topic in Parliament. It was, quite simply, this: it was better to ship a rifle to Stalin and have a Russian die using it against the Axis, than a Commonwealth soldier die using it against the Axis. That’s hardly supporting slave labor. See also books detailing British plans for post-war Europe – even as early as 1943, they were fully expecting conflict (if not war) with Stalin once Germany had collapsed.

Really, do you have any idea what Ragsy is trying to say? And does he not understand that the Soviet Union WAS one of the “Allies” during WW2? Slave labor certainly was a policy of theirs, as it is has been in most socialist/Marxist regime. Socialism, whether of the National or International flavor, has a nasty tendency to tun virulent and terminal.

I tire of those who don’t think remaining alive is a principle. How do you expect to remain alive when you and your Countrymen have been disarmed and freedom is just a distant memory? Apparently you don’t understand the connection between freedom and life and therefore you don’t believe freedom is worth fighting for by all necessary means. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wondered after he lost his freedom:

What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, polkers, or whatever else was at hand?

So to those of you who think fighting for freedom should be only be carried out under Marquis of Queensbury rules, I offer the words of Samuel Adams:

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”

Agreed on pretty much everything you said. Ragspierre may not think so, but the Left does see confrontation with gun control opponents as a two-scorpions-in-a-bottle conflict. Combined with the malfeasance and lawlessness at the highest levels of government (does anybody seriously believe the Obama Justice Department will investigate and prosecute the Journal News for possibly endangering the lives of police and correctional officers?), and you have a truly dangerous political situation.

That said, I don’t think this Anonymous-style attack on gun control fanatics is necessarily a good idea. For one thing, the Left has a massive martyr complex (think of the “hate crimes” that later turn out to be faked). It is quite likely folks like John Cook – who don’t give a hoot about the lives and safety of people with whom they disagree – will try to milk it for political advantage the way they have tried to exploit the massacre at Newtown.

For another, it is like supporting a Charlie Crist or Arlen Specter in a political race because you think the alternative is worse. Maybe so, but after the election you are stuck with them.

So while I am not as worked up about it as Ragspierre seems to be (like you, I am fed up with this Marquis of Queensbury rubbish), I can easily see it ending up being more trouble than it is worth.

The Journal News printed this map without comment as their salvo in the collective action of Stalinists to criminalize gun ownership. I suppose in some of the addresses they published, children and women live in those houses. The reactive publishing of journalists (propogandists really)home addresses would never have been done if not for the first action. Nanking was raped by a government force who were armed with superior firepower on the defenceless population.

The Left abandoned the overt harassment when it backfired politically (they may well have considered it premature). Now, despite the Left’s media-abetted retreat, some of us want to emulate their tactics.

That said, I’m not prepared to condemn publishing contact info of grossly irresponsible media figures. It’s a worrisome trend, but I won’t condemn civilly picketing their homes from public property. Entering their property crosses a line though, as does disrupting their lives with noise, blocking egress, etc.

We both draw lines WRT children and other innocent parties and interests.

I ALSO think the intelligent response is to demand that legally armed people have their privacy assured by passing appropriate laws, and suing the eyeballs out of the irresponsible pukes who harm anyone via these publications.

In most things you post, Rags, I agree with you. But in this area I’m also mindful of the manner in which the Jewish communities in Europe reacted – reluctantly cooperatively – to Hitler’s preliminary steps before the extinction operation itself began. How many Jewish lives could have been saved if they had challenged or resisted the baby steps before the roof fell in on them?

We’ll never know, but I equate these preliminary retaliatory actions and warnings against the bulk of our national press as fair warning against bullying and divisive Alinskyish practices. They decided to be our avowed enemies. With the two terms of Obama debacle we’ve already been slapped twice and no longer need to turn another cheek. Now it’s time to go to work.

‘Jewish communities in Europe’ – that covers an awfully big arc. Plenty left in the 30s but it was not so,easy .

For most , they could do nothing until the SS were literally at their door. Plenty of Polish Jews fled to the USSR .

Thre was one group of 90 Polish Jewish children on a school camp who were stranded when the bombs came. The teacher saw the trains departing from Riga staion & took the one that would get them to the Urals , which was the furthest place he could think of.

They all survived the war in Russian homes but of course came back as orphans.

It is disrespectful of the plight of millions to cast yourself in their shoes with your little gun.

Such was the thoroughness of the SS & their Polish friends that this was the only group of Polish Jewish children to survive . There may have been other attempts to. Get children out but they were not successful. & obviously all were killed.

I’m glad you oppose taking pix of children, Rags, but the Commies don’t. Why don’t you go talk to Sarah Palin about this?

This is indeed a war, Rags, and they will destroy us by any means necessary, that is their stated goal and intention. I don’t know about you, but my name isn’t Rover. I’m not about to lie their with my legs in the air for some bastard to come rub my belly in response to any attacks from the Left.

Make them pay. Make them feel the pain. That is the only way they will stop. Make them consider consequences for themselves before they act. They are like bratty selfish children who think only about their wants, their desires. Make them think twice. Make them pay.

1. this is NOT a war. This is a struggle, sure. Only a war is a war, and this is not that.

2. from what you said, you imply you WOULD Bork someone…you WOULD go after their children with vile attacks, as did the Collective with Palin.

3. having standards of conduct is NOT being a supine Rover. You can fight hard and effectively…and successfully…and do it with standards. Standards are not delicate luxury items you only use when things are fat. If they aren’t part of your battle kit, you don’t really have any.

4. if you employ deplorable tactics…to whatever ends…I deplore your actions just like I deplore those of others…and it becomes very hard to tell one from the other except by what you SAY you believe, instead of how you LIVE.

5. I consider people who sell their integrity in extremis cowards…moral cowards. Because that is the definition of moral cowardice, seems to me.

Anonymous, if they can keep their priorities straight, may prove to be one of the most effective means of defending liberty by exposing what goes on behind the curtain. I am surprised that they have not hacked the administration-or at least gotten Barry’s grades.

I would also find it interesting to see the communications traveling among the players in the gun grabbing group.

The liberal tactic always punishes the legitimate citizen…never the abuser.
The rich pay for runaway spending
Legit gun owners will be punished for abuses of others
The only folks that end up changing how they behave are the ones that dont need to change.

BTW, big snowstorm in Jerusalem. What and who does the AP picture as representative of Jerusalem? Arabs throwing (there they go again!) snowballs in front of the abomination that is the mosque on Temple Mount.

Rags is refusing to apply the the rules of the Commies to the Commies. Obama, via Alinsky, taught us that you have to make them live up to their own rules, and you will find that they can’t. Gawker showed us clearly that Cook wants to dish but doesn’t like being served. Cook saw nothing wrong in publishing information about law abiding Americans, and would have published more if the cops had made it available. Well, we have more on him, and we outed him on his hypocrisy. Anonymous is Alinskying the Commies and Rags objects. Tough, Rags. Twice as hard.

just so I am sure and don’t make a mistake, you would prefer the links to the database NOT be posted here right Prof?
I have had people downloading it but did not post link when it was being discussed here.
thanks.

Since we’re playing the “some Bill of Rights amendments are better than others” game let us try this out, it’s guaranteed to make the anti-gun zealots (more) crazy.
Proposed:
Step 1= Pick a city with strict gun laws and a high rate of gun violence. How
about Chicago?
Step 2= Select the section of the city that has the highest numbers of
shootings and/or the section in which the largest # of convicted shooters lived
prior to conviction
Step 3= Do house to house/apartment to apartment searches of every residence in
that section to seize illegal weapons
Step 4= Warrants? We ain’t got no warrants. We don’t need no stinking warrants!
(We do have these badges, though.)

To hell with the 4th amendment if it’s for the good of the community. What’s so unreasonable about that?

In 1988, [Chicago Housing Authority Chairman Vincent] Lane launched “Operation Clean Sweep,” a hard-hitting anti-crime program. In the unannounced midmorning raids, when children are at school and drug dealers are asleep, about 50 Housing Authority security officers and managers descend on an apartment building.

Good.
Our press has no checks and balances, and way too much power. Many of the reporters have spouses working for the Democrat party. Many are former Democrat employees. All of this should be exposed and made very public. These people do not care what lives are ruined, as long as their adgenda pushed forward.

The guy from Gawker had a fit over someone doing to him what he is doing to others. I hope to see more holding these reporters to their own standards of behavior. However, I do agree Ragspierre, leave the children out of it.

The press does have checks and balances. “Checks” as in the ones the advertisers write and “balances” as in the red/black ink in the ledger.

I left the Fourth Estate almost 40 years ago, but when my old-school editor was trying to get out the early editions, he’d yell across the composition room, “Wrap it up people. You aren’t winning awards, you’re selling ads!”

The commercial press is dying because people are running away from their partisan product. Boycott their fishwraps or networks and tell their advertisers why. Starve ‘em.

I’m not going to lie. It feels very good to watch journalists cower and squirm when their own tactics are used against them. On a side note: did the publishers not understand that a few of the hundreds of gun owners “exposed” might not take kindly to this action?

On the other hand, I know this is wrong and can lead to trouble. Everything we do sets a precedent. You do something once, and it gets easier the second time around.

The media was once the gatekeeper of truth. Politicians had no leverage here, and were subject to scrutiny. In turn, the unwashed masses trusted the media. This system has broken down, and two out of the three links have failed.

Maybe sending a message to the media will work. It probably won’t. But what other alternative is there?

The Media was never the gate-keeper of truth. They were the original bloggers, with axes to grind and proud of it. News papers started out as the local parties’ rag sheets; there was nothing unbiased about them, but they were honest about it.

It was only much later they bought into the idea that they were publishing the “impartial” truth.

While I have concerns regarding putting info about children out in public it seems to me that the Left always excused their mistreatment of the Palin children as justified because “their mother was a public figure.”

I have absolutely no problems with making the personal info of the “journalists” at the Gawker/Journal News/etc public since they have exhibited no respect for the privacy of others. No public good was served by publishing the names of gun permit holders and IMO it was done strictly for the purpose of intinidation.

It is outrageous to print a list of gun owners in a given locality. I would think that the general public would be mad about that. I wonder if that would inspire some non-gun owners to buy a gun because everyone would know that non-gun owners are defenseless. Gun owners would fear that their homes would be robbed or not want the attention being on such a list would bring. Those publishers of such a list are jerks.

Yes, the publishers are printing the truth but I would think the average citizen would rather not have this truth revealed.

Pay heed to the fact that those that want gun control are first principled with the ideology of redistribution; you know, take from one(advesary) and give to another (loyalist). The guns are not being banned but redistributed.

The USSR was already at war with Germany. The Allies were well aware of Stalin’s charms – please read Churchill’s speech on the topic in Parliament. It was, quite simply, this: it was better to ship a rifle to Stalin and have a Russian die using it against the Axis, than a Commonwealth soldier die using it against the Axis. That’s hardly supporting slave labor.

But it didn’t work out that way, did it? The Soviet Union, might very well have collapsed since the Red army had a colossal desertion rate in the face of the Nazi onslaught. Instead, we saved Stalin’s bacon and undermined potential opposition to his rule. Better to have kept Stalin at arm’s length and fight Hitler on our own.

For almost half a century we ended up with half of Europe under Communist rule. We also had two deadly wars in Korea and Vietnam, and a communist ideology that still murders millions even today in places like North Korea and China. Shipping arms to Stalin was not only a nutty idea at the time, it has also proven to be one of history’s greatest political blunders as well as a human rights fiasco.

Whether or not it was the Allies’ “policy” to support slave labor is irrelevant. They knew about the slave state called the Soviet Union and they were willing to look the other way for short-term military gain (Roosevelt was quite indifferent to the evils of communism). The allies made a pact with the devil, and we are still paying for it today. The enemy of our enemy is not necessarily our ally.

This is actually a lot of words about something off-topic. I was responding to Ragspierre’s remark about the Allies not using slave labor (and his Clintonian attempts to defend it). By supporting Stalin the Allies did employ slave labor, or at least they certainly benefitted from it. It’s not fun facing that fact, but there it is. And, as I think I have shown, making Stalin an ally did not work very well long-term.

I’m not sure a world where Hitler had defeated Stalin and imposed a Third Reich rule on half the world (or more) would have been a significantly better scenario. It almost certainly would have opened up the rest of China for Japan, and with all those additional natural resources, and all that slave labor, Imperial Japan might have been able to stave off attack and defeat for a lot longer than they did.

By publishing the names and addresses of legal gun permit holders, the media whom have chosen to engage in this have endangered the children of those permit holders. The children are wholly innocent parties even by the medias standards but they did not care who they harmed. If the media really believes that they are performing a public service in publishing identities and locations of entire families who are private citizens and have violated no laws, they should be happy to provide the same information to the public about themselves and their families. To do otherwise is deeply hypocritical, and leads to supposition that they are doing it for attention and a buck in a shrinking, hateful and moldering industry attempting to stay relevant. The golden rule applies in this and most other areas of life. Sometimes people only can learn from tit for tat.

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